422. ted witzel

About This Episode:
This week on Stageworthy, host Phil Rickaby welcomes ted witzel, Artistic Director of Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, to discuss the company’s 2025–2026 season and the vital role Buddies plays locally and globally. In this wide-ranging and passionate conversation, ted talks about the curatorial ethos behind the season, how queerness informs both aesthetic and practice, and why Buddies remains a radical, necessary space in an increasingly conservative climate.
This episode explores:

The inspiration and process behind curating the 2025–2026 Buddies season
Why queerness is more than representation—it’s a creative methodology
The value of festivals (Rhubarb, Nuit Blanche, Queer Pride) in Buddies’ identity
Longing as a theme: desire, intimacy, revolution, and more
Highlights from the season including The Green Line, Make Banana Cry, The Herald, and The Begging Brown Bitch Plays
The importance of unruliness, disobedience, and disrespectability in queer theatre
The enduring legacy and global uniqueness of Buddies in Bad Times

Guest:
🎭 ted witzel
ted witzel (he/him) is a queer theatre-maker and artistic leader from toronto / tkaròn:to. primarily a director, ted is also variously a dramaturg, curator, teacher, writer, translator, designer, and performer. he has worked with theatres and cultural organizations across canada, the uk, germany, and italy.

fusing high-octane performance, rigorous dramaturgy, digital aesthetics, and poetic text, ted’s directing is located at the intersection between the personal and the political, and the (visceral, emotional, intellectual) frictions between them.

ted was a guest curator for the 2023 edition of the summerworks festival and is a member of the theatre committee at the toronto arts council. he recently completed a four-year tenure as artistic associate and laboratory director at the stratford festival, where he oversaw the company’s research and development programs. these included a broad portfolio of new works in development, equity-focused systems change, artist residencies, and a collection of artistic explorations and programs that aim to help imagine the future orientation of the company.

ted holds a masters of arts management from SDA bocconi and an MFA in directing from york university and canadian stage. in 2018, he was selected as an artistic leadership resident at the national theatre school, and was a member of the banff centre’s 2019 cultural leadership cohort. he has been artist-in-residence at harbourfront centre, buddies in bad times (toronto) and institut für alles mögliche (berlin).

Connect with Buddies in Bad Times Theatre:
📸 Instagram: @buddiesTO
🌐 Website: buddiesinbadtimes.com

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Transcript

This transcript was auto-generated and may contain minor errors.

Phil Rickaby: Welcome to Stageworthy. I’m Phil Rickaby, the host and producer of this podcast. If this is your first time here. Stageworthy is Canada’s Theatre podcast. Every week I sit down with a theatre artist, or we have a panel discussion, or we talk about just issues that are facing Canadian theatre. I talked to theatre artists that either you know, who are household names or people that I really think that you should know. I’m sitting here on my balcony because for the first time in, I’m not sure how long. There is a beautiful breeze and I am taking advantage of it. If you’re watching this episode on YouTube, please make sure that you hit the like button. Leave a comment about what you enjoyed about this podcast, and also hit the subscribe button and give a little click on that bell icon. Because when you do that, every time I drop an episode, every time I release an episode, you will get a notification that there is a new episode of stage worthy for you to listen to. If you’re listening to the audio only version, if you haven’t, make sure that you subscribe. just open your favourite podcast app and search for stage worthy. And once you’ve pulled that up, click on the follow button, the subscribe button, the heart button, or the plus button depending on what your podcast app of choice is, and then you’ll be subscribed. And so whenever I release a new episode, it will get downloaded directly to your device. And that way you don’t have to do anything. It’s just there for you. You don’t have to go searching for it or wait for any kind of notification. Before I get into the guest this week, I do want to talk about Patreon, because I can’t do this show without the patrons who’ve chosen to back me on Patreon. I’m so grateful for the patrons who’ve chosen to back this podcast. I can’t do this without them. For eight years I have put out this podcast and I’ve never had advertising. I’ve never had any kind of subscription model for this podcast. I think that the voices of the people who make theatre in Canada should be heard by everyone, because I really do think that there are some great people that you should get to know. And so I want to make sure that this is free. But that means that any of the costs and there are costs that go hand in hand with with having a podcast. Are there ones that I’m that I have to cover and, and I, I can’t do that on my own. So the patrons who backed this podcast make that possible. Patrons get early access to every episode. And when there are topics that I want to discuss, when there are things that I’m not sure of, I go to the patrons and we have a discussion about that issue or the topic or whatever it is, and they are essentially the brain trust. Uh, they help me make this podcast. And so if you want to be part of that, if you want to help me make this podcast, go to Patreon.com/stageworthy and, uh, become a patron. It only costs seven dollars Canadian a month. And you become essential to helping me to make this podcast. and for that if you choose to join, I am so grateful. My guest this week is ted witzel. ted is the artistic director of Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, and we are talking this week about buddy’s new season for the twenty twenty five twenty twenty six. It looks like such a great season, and there are a bunch of things that are really exciting, and we’re going to talk to ted about what excites him about those things. And we’ also going to talk about the importance of buddies in Bad Times Theatre, how it is the only queer theatre in the world, it seems. And so there it occupies a really important place, especially in the times that we are living in. Uh, I really enjoyed this conversation and I hope you do too. This is my conversation with buddies in Bad Times Theatre’s artistic director, Ted Witzel. Thank you so much for joining me. Uh, I am really thrilled to be talking to you about Buddies in Bad Times, about the new season that was just announced and and your theatre journey and so much more. Um, but I guess the most important thing we should get it, like, just jump right in and talk about the season. Um, looking at at this season, there’s there’s quite a lot that’s that that’s happening, a lot of, uh, co-productions and a lot of really interesting things. Is there a particular theme to the season this year? There is. And it’s I mean.

ted witzel: Yes and no. I will answer a lot of questions with yes and no. Um, I don’t go into curating with a particular theme in mind. I’m not looking to like A bunch of pegs into a predetermined concept, because the way that we curate at buddies is pretty project based. So it’s a it’s a totally different approach than, than literary curation, which some other theatres in town have, and which I was more familiar with when I was working at the Stratford Festival, where where you really get like the the texts lined up first, and then you find the directors for them and, and build out from there. Uh, we are curating from what is being created out there, what is being created in here, what makes its way to us? Sometimes we’re in the business of of pulling together a project around a particular script. But I would say, um, I do more artist driven curation. And that is that is kind of buddy’s historic M.O. as well. So, uh, this season came together from many of these conversations, started like five minutes after I sat down in this office and before I knew how to use the photocopier and, um, so they’ve come to fruition because these projects feel, feel ready to hit the stage. And then at that point when I’m like, okay, we’ve got this badass lineup that’s like really ready to go. I start to or like, not even when it’s fully formed, but at about the seventy five percent complete mark, I start to go, oh, here are interesting. These things are connected. And then the last piece is kind of fall into place based on the connections that I’m starting to find. So with with last season, I know we’re going to plug this season, but, uh, there was this really interesting moment when when I was curating last season and I was trying to to make a choice between actually two different projects that I thought I might open the season with as my first directorial statement here. And, and I looked at the way that Oraculum was connecting to Born Again, Crow and and Zuko. Roberto Zucco was one of the pieces that I was thinking about. And I went, oh, there’s this kind of movement towards the divine, the transcendent, the, the mystical inside of, of of queerness and queer rage that actually feels like, okay, I do need to move towards Zuko because it actually makes a really lovely journey across the text that we’ve pulled together. And something similar happened with this season, um, where what was there was a piece that became one of the pieces came to me after most of the conversations were there. And this, um, uh, a creative team reached out to me and said, we love what you’re doing. It, buddies. We have this piece. We think it might actually work there. We weren’t planning to produce it with an institution, but, um, it just makes sense with what you’re doing at buddies. And. And once I read that text, um, I went, oh, there’s this really interesting, uh, kind of LA that I’m feeling across all of the pieces. And the longing, I mean, longing is just the gayest. Like, it is basically the queer experience. Um, but, um, it is like the the longing is simultaneously a longing for intimacy, longing for tenderness, a longing for sweaty bodies and a longing for revolution. And it this, this sense of yearning, pining, longing like I sometimes I think like the gay agenda is just longing too long for things. Um, but it felt like something I could really, really hold on to that was pulling it together. So we ended up. Look at that. I’ve got a prop. Um, we ended up with a season curated around this, this phrase. These are the things we longed for. And and then it was really exciting to take. I love to already have that phrase ready when I go into the graphic design process, because Fran Chudinov, who is an amazing interdisciplinary artist. Also a dancer, but is also a photographer graphic artist. They then grabbed from that. They said, okay, if you talk about longing in these ways, there is this, this, this movement towards like they really wanted to be in like shades of purple and like really great foggy backgrounds and, and they’ve built this beautiful like Ascii needlework kind of texture over it. So it does this kind of digital garble with these very classical kind of handcrafts. And I loved that. Like I love having the thematic there as a prompt for how we then like, build out the brand identity, uh, and the visual identity of the experience of a whole lineup of work. Like, I think it gives a coherence to the journey through, through all of these works that we’re asking the public to go on with us.

Phil Rickaby: I mean, I really do think that design is is is is sort of the forgotten, um, uh, partner in any theatrical season, any theatrical endeavor. Um, I think for some people, it ends up being like the last thing they think of when it should be, like, so early. I was talking with, uh, the solo artist, uh, Gillian English many years ago, and she said, I don’t do anything unless I know how to market it. Like I won’t even write it unless I know how to market it, which is it opened my eyes and it was like, oh, this is you’ve got to do this stuff early. It can’t be an afterthought. And the, the, the that, that that brochure looks great.

ted witzel: Thank you. Yeah. I mean, Nina Lee Aquino has this great question when she’s considering pieces to to curate. And I’m on the the National Creation Fund curatorial committee with her. And she she asks often like who who is this piece, a love letter to which it really, in a way, is asking that same question, like, who is your target audience and how are you going to bring them to it? Because that that that first question of like, who is this for and why are you doing it becomes the becomes the, the, the impulse for how do you brand it? How do you market it? Because it’s really how are you connecting the work with the public that is that you’re inviting in to see it? Um, and, and what I’ve always loved about buddies, you know, in my entire time as an artist related to this place, I’ve felt like the graphic design is really has really been a strong part of the artistic identity and, and in particular. And it’s something I’ve continued that all of my predecessors, or at least the most recent predecessors are doing, I, I put the lead artist front and center in the marketing. I’m not I’m not necessarily doing a cast shot. Many of these pieces aren’t cast yet, but but at buddies, because of the way that we work and the particular relationship that we’re trying to build with the public, which is to make them partners in adventure towards like a disobedient, subversive, unruly kind of queer creativity. I really want to allow the the audience to form the relationship with the lead creator.

Phil Rickaby: Yeah, yeah. For sure. I mean, just looking at, I mean, it’s interesting that that, you know, there’s no cast yet, but the the images are, are very striking. And I think it is important the creators front and center. One thing before we start going into some of the shows, one of the things that I noticed as I look at this this season is one thing that I don’t see often is the participation in festivals. As part of the season. You have Nuit Blanche, you have the Toronto Burlesque Festival, you have, uh, Rhubarb Festival. These are all, uh, contained within your season. And I think that’s something that we don’t often see. Uh, is that something that is very important to buddies and the ethos of buddies to include the festivals in the season.

ted witzel: For sure, I would like the audiences to be coming for the festivals as as well as the mainstage pieces. I think that that’s, you know, they are all part of the same ethos and like those three festivals and then we also run Queer Pride Festival in June are all like they all serve different artistic ends inside of the broader mandate that we have, whether it is, you know, we Blanche and Toronto burlesque, burlesque festivals are are more nightlife based, um, and sort of underground performance based, whereas rhubarb is a festival of of artistic experimentation and queer pride kind of runs the gamut. It’s actually like a community created festival, in a way, because we play host to a whole bunch of people who are doing their their big pride version of whatever their regular event is. But but there’s something also about just the idea of festival and what I think festival. Festival is a as a, as a notion can unlock for for an audience experience. I’ve had some of my best experiences as an audience at festivals, because it carves out a limited period of time where you’re being asked to to engage differently. I mean, I wouldn’t see three shows in a day in a normal week, but if it’s a festival week and it’s rhubarb, I’m here to see the whole lineup. Um, and I think that there’s a, there’s a, there’s an invitation to lean in to, to go a little bit further. I mean, I remember even when I was very young in the city, uh, it’s going to date me, but like, it was in the peak of North by Northeast when Toronto’s music scene was really, really robust. And and those were three of my favorite days in the city, because I would be all kinds of wasted flying around the city on my bike with a cigarette in one hand and a Red bull in the other, and maybe half a hand on the handlebars, like racing from venue to venue. And there was a kind of, you know, when you think about Carnival, you think of like the roots of the word carnival come from meat and come from like a kind of bloodthirst and, and that, that added layer of appetite and pleasure and carnality that you’re invited to bring to the festival environment feels really exciting to me, and I think it’s very aligned with our ethos as a company. Yeah.

Phil Rickaby: Yeah, absolutely. Um, jumping in, let’s talk about the first show to kick off, uh, the season, the Green Line. You talked about making decisions last year, about what show was going to kick off the season for the Green Line. What what was it about that show that made it the one that you were going to make the artistic statement of opening the season with this show.

ted witzel: I mean, I love this piece. One, it’s part of it’s like the origin story of this piece. It actually began at the Rhubarb Festival in twenty nineteen, so it was six years ago. It’s an incredible script. It’s really, really beautiful and poetic. I think Makram has has woven these two narratives together with this incredible. Like a tenderness in, in the poetic rigor that he writes with, um, and it’s such a strong and clear and well composed piece, it felt like a I just wanted to start really strong. And I think what I learned from, from last year to this year is that the the most successful pieces I felt from, from last year were the ones that were the most squarely at the center of what buddies has been for me, at least in my entire relationship, which is a home for rigorous, edgy, um, experimental theatre. And so in bringing this season together, it does double. Last season was quite an interdisciplinary, and I loved all of the different corners that we poked into. And some of that carries over into this season. But the four main stage, long run pieces that we have are all really falling into that, like how the four pieces of theatre that are created, inviting queerness as an aesthetic and a creative methodology. And I think that that coming out of the gate with Makram, it’s a it’s a beautiful, queer Arab love story. Uh, but it’s it’s also a story about how we hold histories and the generations that came before us and built it. It feels like there is really I mean, it’s hard in a place like this to curate something for everyone or to curate because queerness is so fractious. Uh, what’s going to appeal to different segments in the queer like? What we need and what we want from our art is always going to be so different, but it does feel like there are access points for a really big piece of of buddy’s audience in the Toronto theatre audience in this piece. And, and so I’m really, yeah, really excited to to start off with a piece that has this kind of poetic rigor to it. I really wanted a strong. I mean, thankfully, I didn’t have to make the choice in ordering the season in terms of, well, I’m going to it’s not like I’m trying to hide something low quality somewhere, but I felt like I wanted something that felt very strong and really on on the Mark as a piece of theatre, um, that, that could invite people into the beginning of the journey. It is it’s it’s not so experimental that it’s hard to find your way into. It’s a good warm up. It has access points and also it has an incredible rigor and beauty to it.

Phil Rickaby: Yeah. Yeah. Um, we jumped through. We have. We have a night of Nuit Blanche. Uh, we have the Toronto Burlesque Festival. I really want to concentrate more on the the longer running, the productions, things like that. Uh, we have, uh, I don’t know if I’m pronouncing that right. Um, but it’s that is interestingly, that is, uh, to me, the one thing that jumps out that’s the the one of the shows that is not a co-pro with another company. Um, so what is it about that show that was that jumped out at you, that you, that you wanted to to make this show a part of the season?

ted witzel: That show is, uh, I mean, it’s an incredible tour de force performance from Gabriel Dharmu. It has toured a whole bunch. So. So part of the reason for that is that we’re not developing that show. That show exists. It has played at the Push Festival. Uh, it has played in Montreal. It has played, I think, at High Performance Rodeo. It’s had a couple of years of life before coming to us. And and we have we have a specific funding stream and program, Queer Voices Canada, that the Department of Canadian Heritage Funds, where that gives us an opportunity to bring in queer work from elsewhere in the country. Gabriel is Montreal based. Um, and so that the partnership with heritage allows us to to bring in presentations of work from outside the province to, to sort of we are the queer mothership in this country in a way. And so to be bringing our artists in conversation with artists who are creating further away from us. Um, the pieces is really amazing as a long form drag, almost opera Gabriel’s Gabriel is actually he he has a PhD in musicology or composition, and he’s really down that whole um, and it weaves between Bollywood pop songs, experimental music, and it’s such a like a broad picture of Gabriel’s musical practice, as well as a really compelling story of Gabriel’s sense of self as split between his drag character Bajoria and himself. And it’s a bit of a it’s it’s a musical biography of his drag character. Um, and it’s, it’s a just a really intelligently and and composed piece. And it’s, it’s a pleasure to watch. It’s, it’s, you know, it’s a great long form drag show.

Phil Rickaby: Well, who doesn’t who does not love a good drag show. And I love the idea of, of sort of exploring the character. Um, I think sometimes people get caught up in the, the lip sync and the, the, the comedy of drag and don’t delve as much as they could into who the character of the dragon, the drag character is. And I love that, I love that.

ted witzel: Yeah, yeah, it’s a it’s a really and Gabriel is such a I mean, when you meet him, he’s he’s so smart and sensitive and and there’s a, there’s a side that you meet in Bajoria that is so you know, that has that drag camp energy and this, this real. And Gabriel himself in conversation is so thoughtful and and so it’s it’s really I’ve loved the producing relationship as much as the my attraction to the piece because the, the kind of split or the dissonance between those extremely thoughtful artists, um, who who also has this amazing energetic drag persona.

Phil Rickaby: So after that show we have Make Banana Cry, which is a partnership with Toronto Dance Theatre. And again, now we’re now we’re back into the idea of multidisciplinary, uh, projects. Um, so with this being largely a dance, uh, production, what was it about make Banana Cry that that spoke to you as something that you wanted to to have on the buddies stage?

ted witzel: Well, again, it’s a similarly to it has been around. It has like it’s been to Hamburg at Kampnagel. It’s been on the boards in New York. It’s been a festival and it’s been, uh, presented by Portland Institute for contemporary Art. It’s a really smart, sexy, fun piece. And and it it is like it’s a partnership with Toronto Dance Theatre. And it really it does lean into the theatre part of dance theatre. It’s, uh, the the intervention into the space. Part of why Andrew brought it to me for a collaboration was because it literally cannot fit inside of the Winchester Street theatre. Um, and the buddy space is big enough to hold it. Um, and it’s a show that he made back in Montreal with his collaborator Stephen Thompson. And so, um, when it was practical, that started the conversation. But also I had done an exercise when I came in of trying to map our. This is going to sound so irritating and nerdy. Um, I was trying to map our market position in the Toronto theatre sector, and I don’t know. I don’t know if that’s irritating, but I mapped it according to vectors of, um, like, production value. Like how how expensive does the experience feel? Um, and then edginess on the other axis. So, so, you know, like companies like Mirvish, Stratford, all of them are going to be high up on that production value front. And then then thinking about like that excessive edginess and who is nearby us. And I actually found in my completely unquantifiable exercise because it was it was kind of on vibes. Uh, but but in looking at it, I feel like Toronto Dance Theatre is, is kind of the closest energy and aesthetic to what we do here. There’s a really natural synergy, uh, between the the works that we present, like, we we go right to the edge of theatre and they go right to the edge of dance, and. But we’re both on a on a track to, like, how do we experiment with form? How are we catering to. And when I go to PDT, the audience that they have is similar to the audience that we have here. There’s I think that there is a complimentary taste thing. So it felt really organic and natural to collaborate. And then the way that this piece plays with space in particular, it’s it’s set up that we’re going to be setting up the chamber as a fashion runway. So it’s that U-shaped runway with some of the guests in a bank in the middle, and then on either side and then at the front of it. Um, so it’s really going to be a completely different experience of our space. Um, and there’s an installation on the way in. So there’s a real rigor and an And exciting vision about the spatial journey and the experiential journey for the audience. And whether it’s, you know, at six and one, half a dozen of another, whether it’s dance or theatre in the end.

Phil Rickaby: Yeah. I mean, just one thing I’m noticing here is like talking about stretching, like between, uh, different aspects. The next show up is the Herald, which is like Greek myth and Antonio Banderas astrological chart and and so much more like, what is it about the Herald that that’s like it sounds as as wild as anything else.

ted witzel: Oh, it’s so wild and and and I, I think this piece of writing is so brilliant and I have so much trouble explaining it. Because what I think is so transformative about this piece is that, Jill, the way she’s composed. It starts you off in what feels like a performance lecture or an easy one on one talk about Jill’s trip to or Jill’s experience with her astrologer and her birth chart, and comparing it to Antonio Banderas and his Kate making adventures. And it morphs and mutates out of there and this really organic way into this. You know, she goes from making capes, which can free associate you towards both here. Yeah. Free associates you towards heroes. And from hero she goes to Heracles and from Heracles she goes to the labours of Heracles and then circles back to like the labor of making capes and the labor of being a human and the labor of today’s economy. So there’s this free associative drift. And, Jill, I’ve known Jill for a really long time, and Jill has a really poetic imagination. Um, we have some of the same favorite poets in common. And and so watching Jill work in this, this poetic, dream like way feels really exciting. And it pushes it pushes form. And what is common across all of these pieces is I’m, I’m interested in, in bringing together challenging work. I hear from a lot of people like, sure, I go to this theatre to be entertained. I go to this theatre for like a great literature. I go to buddies to be challenged and to to encounter the unknown and to be asked to think and experience performance in ways that I wouldn’t normally. And I think, uh, I’m really interested in proposing that challenge, not as an affront to the audience, but as an invitation and interested in asking people to bend and reach. But I’m not interested in breaking them. And I think that Jill’s aesthetic play and and poetic voice and real disarming, Um, you know, she goes between Heracles and how to shop at Shoppers Drug Mart in the space of half a page, and it feels totally organic, but so grounded. It’s so accessible and and beautiful. And with all of those associations that she makes, she’s revealing something new to me that, like, is an observation I wouldn’t normally make. But she, she she, she works through cognitive dissonance in a way that that gives you these surprising insights into really mundane things, like picking up a prescription.

Phil Rickaby: I think that it is, uh, one of the gifts of theatre that we can talk about issues, but sort of like hide them in a wrapper, you know, we don’t have to. You don’t have to hit people over the head with it. You can sort of just, um, deal with, like, big questions and challenge people without, like, shouting in their face that they’re being challenged. And. And this sounds a little bit like you can you have the challenge, but also like the whiplash of where is this going? And like being really entertained by the show.

ted witzel: Yeah. Yeah. It’s and it’s, it’s, it’s a piece that really takes care of you. It is like it’s exciting. It’s it’s such an adventure because you you rove across time, across history, across the globe. And and yet it never leaves you behind. Um, and it always allows each of the places that it’s going to become personal to you. I’m talking about it in such abstraction, and I like I want I still am refining my like, hook on this one because it is, it is maybe it is maybe the biggest marketing challenge, except that Jill just looked so hot in this photo that it’s actually not that hard. Um, but, uh, it is. I, I read it on a I tore through it on a flight. Weirdly, I read it on a flight to Bulgaria, of all places, and by the time I got off the plane, I immediately texted Jill and her producer Sasha and was like, okay, let’s talk. Let’s figure out next steps on this, because it. And that was three drafts ago. And still it was like, yeah, I believe in this. I trust where you’re going. And I’m so excited by what you’re offering here.

Phil Rickaby: Next up is I mean, uh, and the the begging brown bitch plays. Uh. Bilal Baig is no stranger to Canadian audiences, especially if people have watched, uh, their show on on on on CBC gem. Uh, they’ve been around um, tell me about about this particular show and and, uh, what what it is about this, this this production that is, is that people should really see. I mean.

ted witzel: What I love About Bilal. She’s always. She always knows who she’s writing for. Um, and in this case, she’s. She’s developed these pieces here in residence at buddies over the last. I mean, duty had its first sort of workshop existence in our emerging creators unit about seven years ago, um, and then came into residence. And it was initially it was like, are we going to expand this one play? And instead theyll all wrote a sister play? Um, but it’s so it’s so speaks directly to the buddies audience in a way that like, I don’t think these plays would be possible to develop in many other theatres because it’s these plays both claim the space for for brown trans women at their center to be agents of chaos and havoc and and almost destruction. Not but like not inside the trope of like a. There’s shitty detective shows where, like, the resolution at the end is. And she’s evil because she’s not really a woman or anything. Or like the flip side of that, which is that like standard trans trauma narrative, but just because they are people, like just on their on the basis of themselves, yeah, they can be a bit destructive and they can cause havoc because they are people too. And, you know, we we shouldn’t, you know, know marginalized person should be exposed to this dichotomy of like villain or victim, but like, where is the space for them to have agency to kind of be shitty people on their own and for us to understand why they’re shitty people on their own? There’s something, you know, the thing that I did a lot of Brecht in my early years as a theatre maker and, and trained very much in a, in a German, very German theatre school uh, and worked in Germany a bit. And the thing that I, I found about Brecht is that so often those plays are about why they’re not about resisting tyranny, but they’re actually about the very human reasons why people fail to resist tyranny. And it really humanizes people in the face of a political landscape. And I think that that’s something that happens in these plays, too, where where there is the broader political context that that these characters are operating in, and then there’s just their selfhood, which they are entitled to. And it’s funny and it’s tender, tender and it’s manipulative at times and it’s sexy and you’re just there with them. And, and they are dancing both with context and the self and, and finding their way through these very, very funny and, uh, and, and at times dark relationships.

Phil Rickaby: Yeah. Yeah. Now, rounding of the season is a co-production with the Howland Company. Uh, take rembo. And, uh, that’s why Susan Fornier, um, and, uh, what what is it about this show that made you want to end the season with this one?

ted witzel: This show? I’m very deeply involved with and have been for eleven years. Um, so, Susie, Susanna Fournier is one of my, like, closest collaborators, and I don’t even know how many things we’ve made together over the last, uh, eleven years that we’ve known each other. But when when we first met, this was one of the first projects. It was it was the second thing that she had written that she shared with me. Um, and, and at the time, it was this, like polemic, this, this manifesto, it was Susie’s rage poem about how terrible it is to be an emerging artist in the city of Toronto. So it takes four poets and puts them in hell, which is kind of the condition of being an emerging artist in the city of Toronto in twenty fourteen. And and we’ve had this. And we were Susie was writing it for the Howland Company and brought me into that first workshop process. I think we flew back from Berlin, and the next day we were in a workshop for this piece, and it was a bit of a fever dream. Um, and, and we’ve the piece just kind of it didn’t it wasn’t the right time or we couldn’t get all the producing partners together and it kind of sat and we were like, where is the right home for this? And it always felt kind of like a buddy’s piece, but I, I wasn’t programming buddies at the time. Um, we had at the time Evelyn was here, and we had too many pieces that we were putting in front of Evelyn. So we were like, we should back off. Um, and we revisited it about a year and a half ago. Um, Susie did a big revision on it, and and it was after Susie and I had both before I was at buddy’s, I had moved to Italy, and I was like, I quit theatre. I don’t want to be embarrassed anymore. And Susie was trying to quit theatre as well. Um. And deep inside, the story of Arthur Rainbow is, you know, he quits. He quits art at the age of twenty and goes off and does terrible things and France’s colonial like holdings, um, and then just dies. Uh, at thirty five. But like this, this tension between like of, like this, this relationship with art and this constant quitting of art and and the pull of it and also the rejection of it. Uh, so it felt really felt really salient to come back to the piece after I had been like, just kidding. I don’t quit art. I’m going to go run buddies now. Um, and, um, and we, we read the piece with the Howland Company, uh, a year and a half ago, and, and Susie unlocked something in the draft by reframing it as a period piece. So it’s still set in twenty fourteen, but now we’re older. We’re not emerging artists anymore. It’s it’s it’s now a period piece about that time in our lives, but also the like extended tension of like, what is it, what is it, what is it that is so exquisite in what what theatre and art can do? Exquisite is a word that that Susie and I used a lot. We had this whole voice memo. We were trying to write a book about quitting theatre while I was living in Italy, and she was on a retreat in Thailand, and we were exchanging these long voice memos. Um, what is that exquisite thing that makes art so hard to quit?

Phil Rickaby: I guess that is the question. I mean, we hear all the I’ve heard talk to all kinds of people who quit theatre, quit the arts, and I’m talking to them on this podcast because they they came back, you know, it’s it’s the thing that I think it ring, it can ring you out, but there’s something about it that can pull you, that keeps pulling you back in, you know? Um, I want to talk about about buddies and the importance of buddies. Um, now, I’m an old man. I remember when buddies was not in its current location, I remember. Oh, what street was it on? I mean, there’s yes, it was on George Street. I remember when it was like this dark, dingy, like warehouse space on George Street. And then it took over Toronto Workshop Productions space, which is where it lives now. But the importance of of of buddies in bad times, the theatre, especially now, as it feels like in some ways there’s a backtracking to the way things felt when buddies first started the the the silencing of of of queer voices. Um, talk to me about about the importance of of buddies, uh, in Toronto and Canada and in the world.

ted witzel: I am finding myself so. Exhausted or like heartbroken. Heartbroken by like the now more than ever of it all. When I’m making fundraising apps or writing grants or trying to speak about the value of this place, we are. We are facing a moment that I just didn’t expect to like. I didn’t expect to be back here. I did not expect to be justifying my existence as a queer person. And I certainly did not expect, you know, like, especially like my trans queer siblings and, and, and, and folks who are located in different, different cultural contexts than we are to be experiencing this wild backlash in this moment. And, and and there’s, you know, there’s so many clues that point to like how we got here. It’s not that useful for me to post-mortem it. Um, but it is it is a really frightening time and and it’s. So you point to buddy’s time on George Street. As you know, as much as I say, I quit art, the thing that made me come back, the thing that made this, this job exciting, or the proposal of spending some time, um, in service to this organization. Exciting is just that. This organization is unique in the world, that it is forty seven years old, that it has existed for long enough and, and, you know, survived multiple maybe it’s going to shut downs. Um, or maybe it’s going to be outlawed. Or like there were challenges from the City Hall, there were challenges from the media. There was a real backlash when they gave buddy’s this building after Toronto Workshop Productions left it in the early nineties, which was, you know, still in like the peak of the Aids crisis and the peak of of that kind of nineteen eighties Republican right wing backlash. Um, and and buddy’s kind of against all odds has this incredible and astonishing legacy. And, you know, I’ve worked in Germany, I’ve worked in Italy, I’ve worked in Belgium, the UK. I’ve seen other theatre ecologies outside of those places. Everywhere I go, I go looking for an institution like buddy’s, because it is the place that I feel, you know, more than any other institution in this city, like made me as an artist and gave me a home as an artist. And in places where you would expect to find it, like London or Berlin. There is not an institution that centers queerness as something beyond representation, and goes into it as proposing an aesthetic or a form or a creative methodology. And that is really It is astonishing that buddy’s holds that, and it was only through leaving Canada that I could look back and be like, wow, there is a remarkable conversation around queerness as an artistic practice that buddy’s has cultivated and anchored over the last forty some odd years, that that is truly unique in the world. Um, and, and it’s it’s a weird tension because we have this rising tide of hate. And also every theatre in the city is doing gay shit now. Um, so, so there’s, there’s, there’s both this in, in sort of violent energy lingering in the periphery, which it doesn’t feel so present in the city of Toronto, but I am aware of it on the internet. I’m aware of it in our political discourses, and also a little bit like our unique value proposition in terms of telling queer stories is like everybody’s doing it. Uh, in this city. So, so finding what is the thing that is really, truly buddies right now? Where is the core of our energy? Where is the core of the value that we can add? Which is why I’m talking about stuff like unruliness and edginess and disobedience, because I think there’s a, you know, in a time when I think that proliferation of queer stories around the city, I might say, comes from a tight geist of respectability politics, but his is here for disrespect, ability, aesthetics. Um, we are we are here to be the impolite and defiant and defiantly sexy queers and and to there is something around queerness as a political orientation, uh, that has a sense of rebellion built into it. And so that’s, that is the energy that we offer.

Phil Rickaby: Well, with buddies, what buddies was founded? There was no respectability politics. There was no respectability in it. It was literally about like, let’s put this stuff on stage. Let’s do it. Let’s, let’s, let’s put it out there at a time when, like you said, nobody was like the stories were in the closet. And here they were now on stage, which, again, it this, this moment, this, this bullshit that’s happening is a continually surprises me and yet doesn’t. But like each act of cruelty, each each act of erasure just makes me more angry. Uh, just because it is like we went, we. How far did we come in our in in in not just respectability, but like, just like the ability to live, to be out, to be all of these things. And now there’s all of these forces trying to push people back into the closet and not just back into the closet, but like, to not exist. Um, and that makes. And again, when you say there’s nothing like buddies as you travel the world in places where you would think there would be something like buddies to, to to find, uh, just it not being there. It’s surprising, but also just makes buddies in bad times more important, not just in Toronto and Canada, but a voice in the world.

ted witzel: Absolutely. And and I mean, having us be a voice in the world. I think that there’s, you know, my, my, my queer agenda is global domination. Um, uh, not so much that but like, I’ve noticed that there’s this interesting thing because queer culture for so long, like queer culture, emerged from the grassroots, it comes from community organizing, and it comes from it comes from gathering places. It comes from the underground. And and there is no it’s very rarely exists from a top down place. It comes up from the collective. And so when you look at like the different queer festivals, queer venues. Queer spaces for performance around the world, all of them have come up from the grassroots, from their local ecologies. Buddies has like buddies kind of, we say, largest and longest running. There’s a few theatres that are older than us, but they’re not as large as us. So we’re it’s a bit it’s a good marketing line. We still use it on our grant application. I still say it to donors, but it is a bit grey zone there. But but the size and scale and history of this place make us really well positioned to be a global leader and a holder of global networks in queer performance. There are there are conversations that this institution has started. The conversations that I was having with my colleagues when I was an artist in residence here, that was that was one of the best things about being an artist in residence here was, was that I could have these really mind blowing conversations with other queer artists about practice, about aesthetics, about form, about all of these things that we artists can get really nerdy about. And, and, and to find out how queer politics and queer community organizing were impacting the ways that we were building our creative processes that felt really rich here. And that’s a thing that we can hold and we can also proliferate. So so I do my my hope as we as we rebuild the organization coming out of the the pandemic period and a time of turmoil is that we’re not just rebuilding and repairing relationships held locally, but but growing the work that happened in the last decade to build connections internationally and to to to really highlight the value and uniqueness of this organization and the artists that it supports.

Phil Rickaby: One of the things that that we hear, you know, people who are sort of like in the scene around the scene of theatre, um, hear a lot about audiences not coming back and the struggle to build, to reconnect with audiences. Um, and answer this to the extent that you want to, but is that something that, uh, that you are finding with buddies or the audiences, uh, more freely returning to the theatre? Uh.

ted witzel: No. No, I’ll be real. It’s it’s a challenge for us to, I think. I’m so bored of the conversation where we’re all like, people are choosing Netflix over theatre, but, I mean, what what I think people are choosing is the comfort of their own home, and and they need a greater incentive to leave the house. Buddies isn’t a complex position because, um, you know, there was an accountability process around the organization and some turmoil in leadership and governance. And so we also have the organization has, has repair to do in a lot of directions, relationship repair. And that’s part of what I’ve, I’ve taken on since I started, and I can only move at the speed of the number of conversations I can put into my calendar. But, uh, but there is, there is a, you know, it’s hard for me to diagnose here at buddy’s. To what extent is it pandemic change people’s behavior, and to what extent is it people’s, uh, impressions and ideas of what this organization is for? And then to what extent has, like our prior audience, aged out of wanting to be here or gone or like, change their loyalty or buying patterns? It’s a big thing that that I think all of, all of the theatres are playing with to various degrees, whether like regardless of the context that’s informing the changed relationship to the audience, rebuilding. It’s not just about rebuilding loyalty, it’s about rebuilding energetic engagement. Because I, I am putting my energy into an institution. If I am willing to go home from my very long day of managing the homosexual chaos, walk the dog and then get back on my bike and go and see a play of who knows if it’s going to be good or not. You know, I’m taking a chance and I can’t turn it off. And I’ve already left my house. So there’s a you know, I discovered I always thought that I was an extrovert because I work in theatre, and you just have to be. And I discovered in the pandemic that I like I’m actually not on. I find it so exhausting to be out in the world around other people, but I just never interrogated it because I’d never taken a break from it. And I think a lot of people are had this kind of introspective period where they’re they’re wondering, like what they value and how do we how do we make it worth people’s while to leave their house? And. There’s a lot of conversation about changing business models or like making the ancillary the real attraction like making I’ll get shady if I start actually getting concrete about that detail. But for me, like the strategy here at buddies, for me, knowing that what what we used to offer people and what I think we continue to offer people is that that that challenge, that adventure, that that encounter with the unexpected. And and I’ve just had this really just this week, I’ve been talking to, to some folks about a show that existed in this building. In nineteen seventy eight, uh, the Lindsay Kemp Company toured a production called flowers, which was based on Janet’s Our Lady of Flowers to Buddies. And I’m I’ve been talking to to a few folks who who have really clear memories of that production and they like it was for them, the production that changed everything, changed their relationship to art, changed what they thought was possible in the theatre, changed, how they felt about their city that it could contain. You know, this is a piece that was like an underground, scrappy company working at a really high level of, of dramaturgical rigor and, and and creating something really world class, but not on like an enormous budget. It still belonged in this relationship between high art and the underground that I think is still our position. But that show had such an impact, and it had me thinking about the shows for me that have had that impact, that have really, you know, effed me up and, and what those experiences were. And that’s I think what I’m it clarified for me that that’s also what I’m trying to curate in, in leading this organization and building the artistic program. I’m constantly swinging for that like show that changed everything. And that’s what I think we can give people here. And I think different strategies will work for different theatres because they have different relationships to their public. But in terms of our relationship to our publics, constantly pitching for or reaching for for that transformative, transcendent experience is, I think, what’s going to to bring people back. We will not always hit it. That is impossible. I can count on one hand the number of those experiences that I’ve had as a as a girl who sees a whole lot of theatre. Um, and so I recognize that it’s a very high aspiration, but it clarified for me that that’s what I’m trying to do here.

Phil Rickaby: I mean, we should aspire to the, to that, that, that ideal, you know, that should be something to aim for even though, you know, we may not get there. I, I think I’ve noticed, you know, as we, as we sort of try to figure out that puzzle and I wish somebody would do like would would be able to like engage like one of the, the major survey companies to like do a massive survey so we could find out like what is the real reason? Because all we have is speculation. But I’ve noticed that people are willing to pay money to go to an experience. And theatre is an experience, but we need to let people know of the experience. We have to to show them, to convince them to come to it. And that’s we’ll figure it out. We’ll figure it out. But it’s it’s one of the, I think, things that will bring people back once we figure out how to express it and, and to give people to show people why, you know, coming to the theatre is better than spending fifty bucks or whatever to go see projections of Van Gogh or whatever.

ted witzel: Oh, yeah, and those homosexuals will drop a thousand dollars on a Taylor Swift or Beyonce ticket. It’s not. It’s like I hear a lot like price is the barrier. Like, girl, we have ten dollars tickets available. Price is not. Price is not the thing. But but what’s happening at Beyonce or Taylor Swift is like this. This scale of spectacle, the full experience, how you build the night out. And I think you’re so right about like, that’s what I try. That’s what I really want the feeling to be here at buddy’s and we when we when we began my my co-lead, Christina and I worked up a kind of manual of what we’re calling hosting culture. So, um, rather than just processing people as patrons and, like, taking the ticket and pointing them into the theatre or whatever, we’re really trying to build the environment of the building as as something that people can lean into, because I want people to come here and for it to feel lit, like I want people to like we have we have when the bar is our lobby, we have the best lobby in the city. It’s, you know, it’s the the liveliest. It it’s the one that doesn’t, uh, again, don’t be shady. Um, we have the best lobby in the city. It’s the best place to wait for a show. Um, and it is really. It’s so funny because I think buddy’s fifteen years ago more successfully achieved the idea of being an art house theatre for everyone that uses queerness as a as an aesthetic key, uh, where because the conversations around, um, cultural materialism and cultural appropriation have gotten a little bit further along and have been really generative in some ways. But it’s it’s also the heavy focus on on identitarian affinity has also scared some people who might not be queer off from coming to buddies, uh, which is, I find wild because this is a place that uses queerness as a way into, like, making extraordinary art. But this is not a place that is only for queer people. Uh, we center queer voices, but this is a place for anyone who wants, like, that kind of cultural adventure, that kind of experience of like, yeah, I’m going to sit in a gay bar while I wait to to go in and see this wild play, and then I’m going to come out and I don’t know if it’s going to be a furry party or a burlesque night or like the Gay Volleyball League, but I don’t know what’s going to be happening there. But I’m going to walk out and it’s going to feel alive. Um, and that’s actually the experience that I want people to have here, because, you know, you get sucked into the furry party is the only person who’s not in a full food. And like, that’s a story for, I don’t know, for the grandchildren.

Phil Rickaby: Yeah, absolutely. No, just we’re sort of running out of time. But I made a promise at the beginning of this, of this episode, and I need to fulfill that promise. And that promise is talking about how you got pulled into the position of artistic director of Buddies in Bad Times. Um, especially as somebody who was trying to leave the theatre, um, what happened?

ted witzel: I mean, I quit Canada all the time. That was my third time trying to quit Canada. Um, Canada always calls my bluff. Uh, she’s a she’s a savvy poker player. Um. What happened? Um. I mean, the short version is. I love this place. This place made me. It’s it’s not it’s it’s not an exaggeration to say that this place made me who I am. And in a way, uh, that is most true of its of its existence as a theatre. But even when I. When I first came out and was coming to Toronto, this was the first place I went dancing. Uh, like, the Trisha was behind the bar and like, was as, as always, just a fucking icon. Um, and I didn’t even know this place was a theatre for for probably the first three years I was engaging with it. I was just some, like, gay who’d moved here from the suburbs. Um, but but my my experience at buddy’s completely transformed me as an artist. Um, I was invited to to really blow up everything. I all of my assumptions about what an artistic process was and how I related to my source material and, and uh, what I even knew I could create and and how I could relate to my collaborators. Um. And and it was. It was hard to watch the crisis period on. So I actually quit Facebook because I he’s like, I think I’m watching buddy’s meltdown and it’s. Heartbreaking. And also, Facebook was just a really bad place at the beginning of the pandemic. Um. And, and when they posted the artistic director job, I was living in Italy. I had quit Canada because reasons. Like what? What’s my public messaging about why I quit Canada at that time? Um, I. What I was actually doing was going to school in Milan and and and and I also had the feeling I was in my like mid late thirties, I was like, this is the last time I can like fully like fuck off and move to another country and like have to learn a new language and like have a new experience. And it’s like, I’m going to be too old for that very soon. So I’ve got to do it now. Um, and I’m always in a tenuous relationship with theatre because the kind of theatre that I like to make and see is not the most commercially viable. Um, and I was I was building a life over there, and I was pretty committed to staying there, and, and I got invited to apply for this job, and I said no, and I got Re-invited to apply for this job because I was I was really trying to, like, do the thing of like, I’m gonna finish this degree, I’m going to stay in Italy. I’m going to try to try to work as a. I still wanted to work in culture, but I think the thing that I landed on was like, I’ve always been very interested and keen to, like, make systemic change. And through my time working at Stratford and through my time working at other institutions, I had just kind of realised that running an institution is not the place where you go to change the sector. Um, and what I wanted to be doing was pursuing more of a policy making, consulting kind of world where I was looking for the nodes in the systems where I could actually build, build change. And I think that’s so attached to being close to to, you know, how financial decisions are being made and how funding decisions and policy roll out is happening. So that’s what I was looking to do. But when I was asked to consider coming to this place. It was yeah, it was really just love for this place, honestly. That, that. And the way that both buddies and queerness generally, like, have this kind of futurity or possibility utopianism baked into them. Every every homosexual who runs anything gay is going to quote Munoz at some point and speak about queerness as the horizon that we will never truly reach. And there is something about that seductive, um, utopian dream of of what is possible if you put queerness to as a value to work in service of a cause and that’s it’s seductive. And, you know, in coming here, I had to say, okay, I have to be reasonable. Like, I, I know I am not going to change the sector from this job. I can I can support this institution. I can hopefully grow this institution. I can change relationships on on that scale and maybe make some sectoral interventions. But I’m not in a I didn’t take this job to do sector change. Um, but I took this job to for some time and love into helping to pick the old girl up and dust her off and see what she might still be capable of.

Phil Rickaby: I got some great I think that’s a great description of of of the job and, and, uh, and thank you for sharing that with me. Uh, Ted, thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate you talking about this this season. I appreciate, uh, talking about about buddies and and everything else. Thanks for joining me.

ted witzel: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.